Reinhard Keiser (
January 9, 1674–September 12, 1739) was a popular
German opera composer based in
Hamburg. He wrote over a hundred
operas, and in 1745
Johann Adolph Scheibe considered him an equal to
Johann Kuhnau, George Frideric Handel and
Georg Philipp Telemann (also related to the Hamburg Opera), but his work was largely forgotten for many decades.
He was born in
Teuchern (in the
Weißenfels district), son of the organist and teacher
Gottfried Keiser (born about 1650), and educated by other organists in the town and then from 11 at the Thomas School in
Leipzig, where his teachers included
Johann Schelle and
Johann Kuhnau, direct predecessors of
Johann Sebastian Bach.
In 1694, he became court-composer to the duke of
Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, though he had probably come to the court already as early as 1692 to study its renowned operas, which had been going on since 1691, when the city had built a 1200-seater opera-house. Keiser put on his first opera
Procris und Cephalus there and, the same year, his opera Basilius was put on at Hamburg and, as the musicologist Johann Mattheson noted, "received with great success and applause."
This was a fruitful period for him - composing not only operas, but arias, duets, cantatas, sérénades, church music and big oratorios, background music - all for the city's use.
About 1697 he settled permanently in Hamburg, and became the chief composer at the highly renowned
Gaensemarktoper (now rebuilt as the
Hamburg State Opera) in Hamburg from
1697 to
1717. From 1703 to 1709, Keiser he moved it from being a public institution to a commercial entity with two to three representations per week, in contrast to the operas intended for nobility.
In 1718, with the Hamburg Opera defunct, he left Hamburg to seek other employment, going to Thuringia and then Stuttgart. From this period three manuscripts of sonatas in trio for flute, violin and low continuos survive. During the summer 1721, he returned to Hamburg, but only a few weeks later made a rapid exit to Copenhagen with a Hamburg opera troop, probably because of the growing influence of
Georg Philipp Telemann, engaged by the city magistrate in Keiser's absence. Between 1721 and 1727, Keiser traveled back and forth between Hamburg and Copenhagen, receiving the title of Master of the Danish Royal Chapel.
.
After the dissolution of the opera troop, Keiser returned once more to Hamburg, but changes in its modus operandi made repeating past success difficult. Three operas from the period between 1722 and 1734 survive. Personal relations with Telemann remained good, with Telemann programing several productions of Keiser's operas.
In 1728 he became the cathedral
precentor of Hamburg, and wrote largely church music there until his death in 1739.
